Your manuscript is ready, or almost ready. But before you publish your book in a hurry, here are a handful of free tools to help give your book a better chance of success.
While self-publishing is easy, marketing, promoting, and selling a new book or ebook is much more challenging.
To stand a chance, what you do before your book goes on sale matters far more than what you do after publishing.
Read on to find out what you can do before publishing to give your book a head start.
What you need to do before releasing your book
Without a shadow of a doubt, your book cover will be your number-one selling tool. A poor cover will never help sell even a great book.
If you plan to use a professional cover designer, you might want to give them an idea of what you are looking for in your cover. Creating mock-ups is the best way to do this.
If you want to save money, and who doesn’t, you can create your own cover for an ebook.
Once you have a cover, you need to promote it. But using your cover image over and over again is going to get boring very quickly.
A better move is to create lots of variations, particularly 3D graphics, to help you promote your book before publishing.
One factor that many new authors fail to consider is researching the best keywords for a new book. Making the decision about these seven keywords quickly at the time you publish is a surefire way to fail in making your book discoverable on Amazon.
If you are planning on publishing an ebook, yes, all you need to do is upload a Word document. However, this can lead to problems with the formatting and readability of an ebook.
The best way is to check your ebook formatting before you publish. Better still is to prepare an epub file of your manuscript, as it will ensure that your ebook will be perfectly formatted when you publish it.
That sounds like a long list of work to do.
Yes, it is a bit of a list, but luckily, you have access to free tools that can make the job much easier than it seems. Here’s my very brief list of some excellent free tools to help you get things right before you publish your new book.
1. Calibre
Before you publish your ebook, you want to make sure it will look perfect on every device.
Readers use many devices, including a Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Android device, or even desktop.
Calibre is a free ebook manager that can handle all your formatting and conversion needs.
With it, you can convert your manuscript into many different ebook formats.
If you have some technical ability, you can also edit epub files to fine-tune your ebook formatting.
But if not, you can still easily convert your manuscript into various ebook files and formats.
Why You Need It:
Converts your files to formats like EPUB, MOBI, and PDF.
Lets you edit your metadata. (book title, author, cover, etc.)
Gives you control over the layout and appearance of your ebook.
Extra tips:
Use Calibre to create various ebook files so you can check your ebook on different devices.
You can also send these files to friends who may have different devices to you.
2. Kindle Create
If you only plan to publish an ebook on Amazon, Kindle Create is all you need to format your ebook.
It makes preparing your manuscript for Kindle quick and easy.
It’s a free tool from Amazon that takes care of formatting, so your book is perfectly formatted for the Kindle store.
Why You Need It:
A very easy-to-use formatting tool specifically for Kindle.
Automatically creates a table of contents.
A choice of different themes to give your ebook an extra polished look.
Extra Tip:
Kindle Create simplifies the process of publishing an ebook, but only with Amazon KDP. If you plan to publish elsewhere, Calibre is a better option.
3. Canva
Yes, everyone uses Canva.
However, you might not realize that it can help you create eye-catching book covers and mock-ups even if you’re not a great designer.
No, you don’t want to copy and use existing designs and templates. But they are a great starting point to help you design a book cover.
Why You Need It:
Hundreds of editable templates specifically for book covers.
Simple and easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.
Free access to many stock photos, illustrations, and, importantly, a huge range of fonts.
Extra Tip:
Canva’s ready-made book and ebook cover templates are not always the best dimensions for publishing.
Its ebook cover templates are often only 512 x 800px, and even its book cover templates are only 1410 x 2250px. These are fine for mock-ups but not to use to publish.
Amazon recommends a minimum size of 1600 x 2560px. So, it’s a good idea to start with a blank template of at least Amazon’s recommended size.
4. 3D book covers
You need to promote your new book well before publishing to boost your book launch.
But repeatedly posting or sharing a flat image of your new book cover on social media isn’t a great idea. A better way is to prepare your book promotion graphics well in advance.
DIY Book covers is one free tool for creating multiple 3D versions of your book, but you can find many similar tools by searching online.
These images are perfect for sharing news about your new release on social media, in emails, or on your website or blog.
Why You Need It
Create realistic-looking 3D book covers to make your book cover more eye-catching.
Quick and easy to use. Upload your cover and get a 3D image in seconds.
Helps you add more variety to your marketing efforts because you can create multiple versions.
Extra Tips:
You can use Canva to add different backgrounds to your 3D mock-up images.
Another tip is to create different orientations, such as landscape or portrait. Then, you have a collection of images that will suit any site for promotion.
5. Amazon Keywords
Don’t make the mistake of leaving your decision about the seven search keywords for your new book until the last minute.
It takes quite some time to do your research to find seven or more that will help your book discovery on Amazon.
You have a choice of free tools you can use for the task.
The first option is to use the search bar on Amazon. When you enter a word or two, it will return ten related key phrases.
Other free tools you can try are the Ahrefs Amazon Keyword Tool or the KDT Amazon Keyword Tool.
Why You Need It:
These tools generate lots of keyword ideas for you.
You can optimize your book title, sub-title, description, and author website for search engines and Amazon with well-selected keywords.
Carefully selected keywords increase the chances of your book being discovered by potential readers.
Pro Tip:
Free tools are always limited in what they can do. Many authors use Publisher Rocket to access unlimited real-time data from the Amazon book and ebook databases. However, it is premium software with no free option.
Summary
Publishing a new book is an exciting time, but leaving everything to the last minute is a recipe for disaster.
The best way to launch your new book is to plan well ahead and have everything in place before you release your ebook or book.
With the tools in this article, you can cover a lot of bases to make sure you give your new book the best chance of success.
Related Reading: Draft2Digital Or Amazon KDP For First Time Authors
